going on inside of it. So, you might break your inquiry down into even more specific questions, as suggested by UC Berkeley’s Dacher Keltner and Colorado State’s Michael Steger: Is the election disrupting my sleep? Is it interfering with my ability to concentrate? Do I feel breathless, or feel any pressure in my chest? You can also look to your mind for information: Is the election bringing back bad memories—for example, of abusive men in your life? Do thoughts of the election intrude or arise when you wish they wouldn’t? Do you find yourself thinking of the election even when you would rather be thinking about other things? ... posted on Oct 21 2020 (11,208 reads)

and instead desecrates and destroys the earth on a global scale. The earth needs our prayers more that we know. It needs us to acknowledge its sacred nature, that it is not just something to use and dispose. Many of us know the effectiveness of prayers for others, how healing and help is given, even in the most unexpected ways. There are many ways to pray for the earth. It can be helpful first to acknowledge that it is not “unfeeling matter” but a living being that has given us life. And then we can sense its suffering: the physical suffering we see in the dying species and polluted waters—the deeper suffering of our collective disregard for its sacred nature. Would we... posted on Nov 20 2020 (7,834 reads)

labor of reckoning, reimagining and remaking our nation block-by-block, heart-to-heart.” Learn more + sign up at https://tinyurl.com/ybvn88sb - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - More from Parker Palmer here. Rhonda Magee:Law professor, mindfulness teacher, social justice activist I teach about the history and dynamic maintenance of White Supremacy through law. We need to study this to understand how systemic racism has been preserved-through-transformation over our very lifetimes, and what we can do about it More from Rhonda Magee here. Bishop Steven Charleston ,Native American elder, author Stay steady in the Spirit. We knew these days would be difficult.... posted on Jan 9 2021 (8,632 reads)

is an appreciator of earthly gifts and a professor and past president of the US Society for Ecological Economics. Ecological economics is a growing economic theory that expands the conventional definition by working to integrate Earth’s natural systems and human values. But it has not been standard practice to include these foundational elements—they are usually left out of the equation. Valerie prefers the definition that “economics is how we organize ourselves to sustain life and enhance its quality. It’s a way of considering how we provide for ourselves.” The words ecology and economy come from the same root, the Greek oikos, meaning “home&r... posted on Jan 19 2021 (10,486 reads)

following passages are excerpted from Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, by Katherine May, published by Riverhead Books, Nov 2020  Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again. Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeing rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or life event such as bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings cree... posted on Feb 17 2021 (11,272 reads)

an unsettled, lonely. time and  I started taking walks in the evening to relax. It was spring.  Lemon blossoms.  Amazingly, I felt something in me wanting to flow out and dance-- and words-- short poems tumbled out of me.  I was surprised, encouraged, and felt happily hooked. Then one day I serendipitously discovered another poet, and then a small community of poets. For the next 25 years I shared poetry with them. Poetry is a discovery I have made on my way to finding my life. ***   “Slow Road” Last year, my partner and I spent time at an artist residency in Chianti, Italy.  A long winding road led through the countryside,  past... posted on Feb 22 2021 (4,785 reads)

protesting apartheid.   That’s not all.  My mother organized support for people  forcibly removed from towns where they had lived for generations. This was occurring regularly as White areas were “cleansed” of Blacks.  And she offered daily, practical help to a constant stream of Black South Africans caught up in the bureaucratic nightmare of dispossession.  She found allies in government agencies who could keep families together and get life-saving pension and disability payments through the almost impenetrable Catch 22 of South Africa’s many new laws and regulations.  She marched into police stations demanding t... posted on Mar 24 2021 (4,475 reads)

is what love seeks,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her superb 1929 meditation on love and how to live with the fundamental fear of loss. “Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.” Half a century before her, Leo Tolstoy — who befriended a Buddhist monk late in life and became deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy — echoed these ancient truths as he contemplated the paradoxical nature of love: “Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only.” That in love and in life, freedo... posted on Apr 4 2021 (7,304 reads)

(as opposed to the mental operations of the mind), and so the instruction will be inevitably heard as “get out of your mind and into your emotions”—which is, alas, pretty close to 180 degrees from what the instruction is actually saying. Yes, it is certainly true that the heart’s native language is affectivity—perception through deep feelingness. But it may come as a shock to contemporary seekers to learn that the things we nowadays identify with the feeling life—passion, drama, intensity, compelling emotion—are qualities that in the ancient anatomical treatises were associated not with the heart but with the liver! They are signs of agitation... posted on Apr 10 2021 (8,759 reads)

a National Science Foundation grant a few years earlier to recycle steel waste, and as the first Native American to receive such a prestigious grant, he shared that he was feeling pretty cocky. He said that when he first approached the enormous mound of steel waste, his inclination was to think of it as something to be overcome, battled against. Then he told me, “I realized that the waste was not an enemy to be conquered. It was an orphan that had gotten separated from the circle of life. My job was to bring it back to the circle of life.” I was very touched by these words. This concept of waste seemed like a way to recycle damaged, toxic places in the mind as well as in... posted on Apr 26 2021 (4,897 reads)

far into Spring. The crops failed, people starved. At first they burned women as witches as a way to placate the gods. But this did not help, the Winters turned colder, the rivers froze. It makes me wonder how we will react—who will we demonize as a way to assuage our fears? Will we seek refuge in authoritarian regimes, which promise us stability; or populism, nativism, which promise us a voice? I am sure we will find a victim to blame, anything to escape the deep knowing that our way of life is over, that we cannot continue with this story of exploitation and consumerism, this plague that is burning the land. There are stories that destroy us, and stories that sustain us. This S... posted on Aug 19 2021 (6,748 reads)

didn’t expect or desire a real answer. If we got one, it had better be brief, and not too grim or involved. We weren’t up for longwinded or dreary responses. That’s not how the game was played. The pandemic might have altered our customary “How are yous?” a bit. It might have made them less superficial, and more sincere. Those three words definitely mean more to me now than they used to. How about you? As we begin to navigate the waters of postpandemic life (some of us sooner than others), I wonder: Would it be possible for us to move forward more in the spirit of Oliver Sacks? Can we ask each other, with empathy and curiosity, “How are you?&n... posted on Oct 1 2021 (3,877 reads)

I could teach, right? So that's where it started. When you were somewhat immobilized, you were discovering a new capacity for movement -- a movement almost like motionless dancing-- It certainly started out motionless, but I think even more importantly, I was finding that you could refine your awareness. You can get to a more subtle level of your whole being, and that was completely new to me. I began to be interested enough in it that I lost my despair about having lost my previous life, and began to focus on this -- because this seemed really interesting. And then I started to go to bookstores and grab books that might explain this -- books on yoga, books on martial arts- like,... posted on Oct 19 2021 (2,979 reads)

Phillip Ramakers “It’s time to shed our skins, not just confess our sins, it’s time to shed our skins, to feed the hunger within, for the paradise we have lost…” - Kira Kaipainen Nils Kercher and Kira Kaipainen are life partners and unique world musicians who take listeners on multidirectional journeys. Their music simultaneously draws listeners out into the stark realities of our greater world, while also drawing them inward into the dazzling potentials of the human spirit. Theirs is a music that believes deeply in our fundamental interconnection, and the capacity we have to heal together. They... posted on Dec 8 2021 (4,831 reads)

detailed images, and colours reveal a hidden depth, a reflection of a timeless soul, rich with experience, empathy, love and generosity.” —Paul Destrooper, Artistic Director, Ballet Victoria All photographs by Stefan Cremers.  My winter garden is quiet and lovely, with snow piled onto the shrubs and outlining the trees. For me, this is a time for resting and reflection, reading, drawing, and planning next year’s garden. Gardening has always been a part of my life. As a child, I spent summers playing in my grandfather’s stately and formal garden in Rochester, New York, where my great grandfather had managed the Ellwanger and Barry Nursery. Composed o... posted on Dec 9 2021 (6,103 reads)

name is Mícheál ‘Moley’ Ó Súilleabháin. I am a poet from Ireland. These three poems are love letters to presence. That presence we feel when we are close to the source of this life. Gratitude, Wisdom, Determination, and Belief.  All three are excerpted from my poetry book, ‘Early Music’ (Many Rivers Press). The first poem, Turas d’Anam, means ‘journey of your soul’ in the Irish language. This piece is an invitation to grant permission to yourself. To experience a deeper sense of meaning in this life. It reimagines set backs, or conscious retreat, as a strengthening tool. This poem is an invitation to... posted on Dec 16 2021 (7,133 reads)

following piece is excerpted from Your Resonant Self Workbook: From Self-sabotage to Self-care, by Sarah Peyton, WW.Norton, May 25, 2021 The stakes are so high. Self-warmth makes everything better: our health, our immune system, our life decisions, our sense of meaning, our capacity for engagement, our effectiveness, and our intimate connections with others.  But we may have agreements with ourselves, agreements we don’t even know about, to NOT be warm with ourselves. We may have contracts to not like ourselves, to be indifferent, even to hate and be cruel to ourselves. (And others.) Without knowing it, we make these self-agreements in order to leverage... posted on Jan 3 2022 (6,679 reads)

The only way to grasp these feelings is to box again, but punching someone out doesn’t align with who I am today. The anger I felt decades ago, the aggression that fueled my fire in battle, is a dull roar. Yes, the anger is still there. But I’ve found other ways to cope—most importantly, the way I view the anger now and what caused my angst to begin with. This process involved taking a hard and honest look at myself, and I realized building this self-awareness is a lifelong effort, so I’m never really done. Challenges, setbacks and disappointments are a part of being human. I’m wiser from the incidents that I thought would break me. The fact is, I&rs... posted on Feb 8 2022 (2,582 reads)

way back into town, who said he could give her a ride. They got to chatting and it turned out this man was a plumber and knew of an apartment that would soon be vacated. It was located right next to the university and the landlord was a friend of his. The man drove Zoë straight to the apartment so she could take a look and meet the landlord and she signed the contract right then. Such surrender – and trust in God and in humankind – manifests in the diverse threads of her life as an artist, sustainability researcher, and spiritual seeker. “Surrendering reminds me that my way is always inferior to the way of life,” she says, as she describes a brok... posted on May 24 2022 (2,966 reads)

the mama follows. Many indigenous cultures I know do the same, mama follows the children. We, westerners, think children are empty heads we have to fill with our ideas, needs, knowledge, manners, morals. Now I understand that a mother, or father following children (to protect, to be sure) allows the children to learn. What I learn from experience becomes part of how I survive. What someone teaches me from a book is not an experience. As most of us who read, I spent the first many years of my life memorizing so-called facts and information and often un-understood demands. I was fortunate that I grew up in two cultures, among people who expected me to learn what I needed to survive by mysel... posted on Aug 17 2022 (3,565 reads)